Waiting

chains # 1

One night I had a dream in which I was waiting for a bus so that I could chaperone a high school field trip. When the bus arrived I stepped to one side and let a huge crowd of kids board before me. It was their field trip. I got out of the way so that they could have the first choice of seats. The other chaperone waiting with me in the dream is a good friend who is 6’6”. He was pissed that I had stepped to one side. Because of my actions, he was going to have to stand for the whole trip.

I love dreams. I love that I could continue stepping to one side my entire life without thinking much about it, but this one dream with it’s encrypted message about my very tall friend hunched over and uncomfortable during a long bus trip got my attention instantly. It has my attention still. When I close my eyes I see my friend who has absolutely no way whatsoever to be comfortable. I see his head and neck bent to one side, his shoulders hunched, and the side of his head intermittently hitting the metal ceiling whenever we hit a bump. Why would I want to do that to myself? Why would I choose time and time again to step to one side until everyone else is comfortable and then squeeze myself into whatever inadequate space is left.

For most of my adult life I have stepped to one side and waited. I waited until everyone left the house each morning before I started my day. I waited when I went to pick my kids up from preschool until they were finished with what they were doing and ready to go. I waited to start my life until everyone else in the family was on track and didn’t need anything. In the beginning, I am sure I looked like a patient kind person. I remember the self satisfaction I felt when I saw the other preschool kids hopping up in the middle of unfinished projects, a look of anxiety on their faces. so as not to keep their mother’s waiting.

Waiting stopped working for me after awhile. I began to feel irritated and angry all of the time. Sometimes I imagine sending notes of apology to my kid’s dental hygienists, their doctors, their teachers, and sales people in stores all over the city. I want to say I am sorry to anyone and everyone who kept me waiting and experienced my irritation, impatience, and indignation during those years. In my next phase I learned about mindfulness and returned to being patient and passive but with new awareness and understanding. I no longer minded if a doctor kept me waiting or if the 30-minute appointment for a tiny orthodontic adjustment took an hour and a half. I looked for meaning in individual moments. I looked for opportunities in unexpected delays. I quit yelling at my kids even on those mornings when they were moving so slowly that they missed the bus and I had to rearrange my day to drive them to school. I felt better, but I was still stepping to one side and letting everyone else go first.

30 years ago I was staying at a beautiful lodge in western Canada with my husband’s large family to celebrate the milestone birthday of one of his relatives. The management of the lodge left a gorgeous fruit basket in the guest of honor’s suite as a gift. On the first night we were there, everyone gathered around the table in the suite for the birthday dinner. After dinner, one of the other in-laws reached into the fruit basket and helped herself to a kiwi. It was the only one in the basket. It was the guest of honor’s favorite fruit.  The woman in this story divorced out of the family a few years after this trip, but everyone remembers and still talks about this moment and her selfishness as if it happened yesterday. Today, thinking about my bus stop dream I take my hat off to her and bow in admiration.  Yes, it would have been more polite of her to ask before she helped herself. That would have been the correct thing to do. At this moment however, I am smiling broadly at her ill-mannered moxie. I am impressed with the fact that she was not ruled by the need to ask permission, or to wait, or to take care of others. She saw something she wanted and she reached out and took it for herself.

Every time anyone flies on a plane we hear the safety instructions before take off. Over the years I have paid attention, tuned them out, and expressed my hated for the new video version. I am not aware of when I initially heard the instructions to put my own oxygen mask on first before attempting to be of assistance to others. I also have no idea when it became a common self-care saying in our culture. In my dream if oxygen masks had fallen from the ceiling of the bus I would have waited until I was sure everyone had one. My waiting and stepping aside would have killed me.  Time to stop waiting and to start reaching for what I want